Friday, July 5, 2013

The Forgotten Founding Document

Over the decades I have known him, Robert Greenslade has done some of the best instructional reserch on Constitutional issues available on the Internet. Here is his latest - and timely - piece...BW

Every July 4th, America
celebrates the signing of the document commonly known as the Declaration of
Independence. However, there is another document, adopted a year earlier that,
in my opinion, helped lay the foundation for the Declaration of Independence.
This document, which contains some of the most moving words ever spoken by
Founders, needs to be read and celebrated by every American who still values
liberty.

On
July 6th, 1775, the Continental Congress adopted: A Declaration by the
Representatives of the United Colonies of North-America, Now Met in Congress at
Philadelphia, Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up
Arms.

The following was written by
Thomas Jefferson:

“We are reduced to the
alternative of chusing [sic] an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated
ministers, or resistance by force.—The latter is our choice—We have counted the
cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.—Honour,
justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we
received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a
right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning
succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we
basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

Our cause is just. Our union
is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign
assistance is undoubtedly attainable… With hearts fortified with these animating
reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting
the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously
bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we
will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence,
employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to
die freemen rather than to live slaves.”

During the debates in the
Virginia Ratifying Convention of 1788, Patrick Henry stated:

“We are told…that our own
representatives-Congress-will not exercise their powers oppressively;
that we shall not enslave ourselves… Who has enslaved France, Spain, Germany,
Turkey, and the other countries that groan under tyranny? They have been
enslaved by the hands of their own people. If it be so in America, it will be
only as it has been every where else.”

Henry was a prophet. Once again
government tyranny has raised its ugly head. The people of these united States
are being forced to submit to the unconstitutional dictates of judges,
politicians, bureaucrats and other government reprobates who are more oppressive
than King George.

In an article entitled: Historical fact:
Independence Day is a celebration of freedom from government tyranny, Mike
Adams wrote:

“[I]f you celebrate
Independence Day in America, you are celebrating the result of a violent
revolutionary war against a tyrannical government whose crimes against the
People have all been re-created right here at home, via the American
government!

Where we once fought for
independence, we now lay down and surrender our freedoms. The masses of sheeple
have forgotten what it means to live free, and they have allowed a tyrannical
government to treat them with the same disdain that the British empire once
dealt out as routine.”

If Americans were a sane people
who valued liberty more than their new iphone, they would rise-up and drag these
arrogant bastards into the public square and place them in chains for their
lies, thefts and usurpations.

The question we need to ask
this week as the beacon of liberty glows dimmer by the day is: Are we going to
continue to surrender the freedoms our Creator and gallant ancestors bestowed
upon us and live as slaves to government or are we going to throw-off the
shackles and resist the usurpations?

If we do not choose the later,
there will come a time in the not to distant future when we are faced with the
same choice the Founders had to make on July 6, 1775.